Crypto-Stegano Color Image Based on Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) and Least Significant Bit (LSB)

Abstract

Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) has the main factors that make this algorithm widely used, namely its speed and simplicity, so it is known to be easy for efficient implementation. The nature of the key in the RC4 algorithm is symmetrical and performs a plain per digit or byte per byte encryption process with binary operations (usually XOR) with a semirandom number. To improve the visual image after the encryption process, in this article we use the Least Significant Bit (LSB). In this study, the quality of the stego image and the original image has been calculated using MSE, PSNR and Entropy. Experiments were carried out by images with a size of 128x128 pixels to 2048x2048 pixels. Experiments using imperceptibility prove that the stego image quality is very good. This is evidenced by the image quality which has an average PSNR value above 53 dB, while the lowest PSNR value is 48 dB with a minimum dimension of 128x128 pixels.